Never Forget
Posted on 08/10/2005 7:06:56 AM PDT by Wiz
WASHINGTON - US intelligence believes that a cache of manufactured bombs seized in Iraq about two weeks ago was smuggled into the country from Iran by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, an intelligence official said Tuesday.
"We believe they came from Iran's Revolutionary Guards," the official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The find is significant not only because of the Iranian connection but also because it indicates manufactured bombs are now being introduced in a conflict that has seen the use of mainly improvised explosive devices.
(Excerpt) Read more at iranfocus.com ...
"This is why I said use our troops to seal the borders. Then the indigent terrorists would eventually succumb without re-supply. Then see what we can do to Iran and Syria.
I think Clintons Kosovo air-war strategy is an alternative for Iran, as we would have airports, staging etc. in Iraq."
Yes. We all agree with somehow providing the means to seal the borders of Iraq. Many have made comments some fairly accurate in the past few days on other related posts. It is something that is in progress. There was a posts two days ago dealing with how many actual border posts are being constructed, mostly on the Iranian side where roads coming down or through the mountains enter Iraq. These are concrete structures. They Iraqi's are way behind on building them, and some units currently are staying in tents. The article made it clear in this case it is the fault of the Iraqi government for not providing adequate funding, and somehow finding adequate workcrews. People will work for a while then walk off the job, once adequate monies are made. Obviously most of it is hard labor, in the hot sun. Tough to find willing labors. It the proposed dozens of border site buildings where in place and operative, for all we know, the Iranian side at least could be much better covered at this point. As for Syria, Turkish, border. Same deal. We cannot be tying up US troops in to many areas on static border crossings. A look at map show just how long the linear distance alone is. I have been asking myself for a long time how can one have a effective border crossing for the hundreds of roads coming in from Kuwait,Saudi Arabia, Jordan,Syria, Turkey, and Iran? Let along the huge amounts of land with varying geographic variances that can provide ways for entry by foot, undetected.
As for Syria and Iran. At least you recognize they are seperate problems in the end analysis. As many have said over the past year or so on that issue, and I am not against the suggestions. If we can soften them up with aircraft and cruise missles strikes to get the point accros we no longer will tolerate blatant support for any terroist organization, such as lets say can be found in Alleopo Syria, where there are training camps, then who am I to say why not shake them up a bit. Perhaps Bashir should have been told that if he doesn't close those camps down in one month with onsite US military oversight that we would feel obligated to send in a few dozen tommahawks to start the process rolling.
I talk to much. Probably saying nothing must aren't keenly aware of.
Don't you think its time they took ownership of their government? They no longer get a pass. They are part of the problem. I'd give em a month and then light em up.
Isn't this an act of war? Shouldn't someone be pointing this out to the Iranians? Send Brian Blessed to Teheran in a suit of armor to get the message out.
I love that sentiment! You are so sweet and I agree. We must return them to their rightful owner.
How so?
Iran would be crushed. Even Saddam went crazy on them, and when it all went South on him, Iraq held off Iran's repeated invasion attempts without losing an inch of ground.
The death toll to iran was staggering.
We would achieve control of the skies in a heartbeat, and after that its all downhill for Iran.
It would probably come to be known as the Iranian turkey shoot.
The solution is so simple: Use Nukes!
" The wake up call will be long and loud........"
We have many Freepers that are quite aware of the horrible condition our country is in. The wake up call may never come.
Once heavy industrial sites go under due to environmental pressures, simply can't compete in the world market due to cheap labor elsewhere etc., the whole gamit of horrible reasons, it is very difficult to re-establish what we once had. Same goes for say the semi-conductor industry. I wonder how many folks in that case just realize how few we have left. And companies like Intel continue to seek lower labor costs elsewhere. Once there is little left in the way of semi-conductor design/fabrication in this country, we then loss the key players, the designers. process engineers, R&D chemists and physisicts, and the labor force such as many who work in clean room environments on various steps in the often very complicated and exactly process of actually creating the Integrated Circuits, the IC testing engineers, and a host of other positions. These type jobs are not the type thing one just jumps into. Once the body of knowlegeable people with experience are gone. Caput. Another very important major industry goes down the tubes. Then we shall hear all the morons in Congress screaming to the high heavens ........why can't we make critical leading edge technology weapon systems in this country? Why do we have to pay the Chicoms to make our weapons for us. Don't. Some will laugth at what I write. OK fine. Do so. So we move on to aircraft design. One of our freepers (a Russian engineer) has made it known that Boeing has a design bureau set up in Moscow for commercial designs. OK. How long before Boeing dumps a few thousand Seattle based engineers once the Russians show they are able to do an equivalent design working for a lot less money. Then what you do is say, OK, things are tough in the US. Lets go into joint ventures on building fighter aircraft. Then you say, lets go into real estate the hell with the aircraft business, keep the Boeing name, but sell sell insurance, go into the credit card business, but let other countries do take care of the design and fabrication of our aircraft arm. This is what bean counters do in this country. Hey AT&T did it with it's line of personal computers years back. First the CEO made a commitemant that AT&T was going to become a leader in the PC business. Then they went into contracts with Olivatie of Italy. They had Olivatee make the PC, they where junk, the CEO then said we don't want to be in the PC business, we want to get into credit cards. This crap goes on and on and on. Not just the dumbing down of America, but the literal raping of America. Go figure.
I run numerical simulations using the best TOE/OOBs I have access to, currently using 2000 and 2002 OOBs (see Cordesman) for Iran and I have the information you request.
I ran hundreds of sims back in early 2002 using the same vintage data for Iraq and concluded it would take 6 US standard divisions, 1 armored, 1 cavalry, 4 mechanized, to achieve regime change, defeat 7 RGFC divisions, and render the other 16 Iraqi regular divisions to lt 50% combat effectiveness.
This was after a three week aerial campaign using 4 wings of high performance aircraft, 1 wing of heavy bombers modelled on te B1B capabilities, and 1 wing of Stealth aircraft.
Also used were 2 augmented CBGs, and ~75 TLAMs, and the scenario was conducted under the assumption that Tiger Song was fully operational. Variants included a two division task force attacking south from Turkey, and attacks thru Kuwait only.
These sims were run against AI and former marines. Results were pretty much uniform regardless of the scenario, losses of approximately one brigade of armor, the odd fire support assets, and approximately one squadron of fighter aircraft, all to ground fire.
Since mid 2003, I have been focusing my efforts on large scale hostilities with Iran and Syria.
The base assumptions in Iran are 7 US divisions, 2 in Iraq (over and above those necessary to maintain order in Iraq), 1 at Herat, Afghanistan, 2 either afloat in the PG or ashore in Kuwait, and 2 afloat in the Arabian Sea, plus 3 divisions of Kurd infantry, 4 CBGs, 2 in the PG, and 2 in the Arabian Sea, 6 wings of fighter/interceptor/ground attack a/c, including naval aviation, 1 wing of B1B class a/c and 1 wing of stealth a/c.
Conclusions to date:
1. Friendly casualties run very similar to those suffered in the Iraq scenarios, approx. 1 US Bge and 1 squadron of a/c, plus the odd bomber, artillery battery, MLRS, etc.
2. It is much more difficult to achieve air supremacy in Iran, larger air force, more places to hide, larger numbers of AD units, however, campaigns conducted under air superiority do not increase friendly casualties above acceptable rates.
3. Iran's significant numbers of Silkworm era cruise missiles pose a threat only when massed and if Aegis platforms are allowed to proceed into situations where they can be saturated.
4. Iran experiences significant operational difficulties maneuvering combined arms forces, especially when Pasdaran and regular army units are required to operate coherently. (Many observers have noted that Iran is co-locating Pasdaran units with regular army, presumably to make sure the regulars do not abandon their posts or even turn against their leaders, so Iran may well have to live with the lesser of two evils and accept the operational difficulties imposed by parallel chains of command).
5. The Zagros mountains actually benefit the US side in this conflict. The rugged terrain allows Kurdish infantry, with small numbers of US CS and CSS units backing them up, to hold the border against any realistic incursion Iran can muster. NE of Khorramshar, the Zagros impose limitations that require any US breakthrough there to be supported by fixing and/or offensive operations along a second axis. This is most effectively achieved from points south and east. Other mountain ranges in Iran are operationally insignificant, except in post war insurgency situations originating from north of Tehran.
6. Although Iran benefits from interior lines, additional forces at Herat, if capable of breaking out, can occupy positions that can reduce or remove this edge. An amphibious force turning the flank at Zahedan achieves the same effect.
7. Although Iran's armed forces are slightly greater in number than Iraq's were under Saddam Hussein, their annual military expenditures average less than 6$ billion USD, and obsolescence and obsolete equipment, combined with spare parts shortages render individual units almost exactly equal to their Iraqi counterparts in combat power. Iranian armored units, when forced to coalesce and fixed, are just as vulnerable to US standoff weapons as Iraq's RGFC units were. Human wave attacks have zero combat effectiveness against modern cluster munitions delivered under at least air superiority.
8. Iran was never able to close or threaten to close the Straits of Hormuz.
9. Major combat generally took place at the outer periphery (borders), again just inside a secondary line of defense running in a south facing semicircle from Hamadan to Esfahan to Saidabad/Kerman, after which cohesive Iranian resistance collapsed in a general retreat, firming up again only on the outskirts of Tehran. Tehran took a lot of softening up before it fell, collateral damage was assumed to be high.
10. Iranian air operations were only nominally effective, and then only when used with surprise or in the absence of their US counterparts. At force ratios equal to or below 4 to 1, US units were uniformly victorious. Almost all US aviation losses were to land based AD batteries. US air to ground operations were hampered by not achieving air supremacy in that a certain percentage of multi-role capable a/c had to remain designated for air to air combat, and therefore could not deliver ground ordinance.
11. All of the above depend on being able to conduct unlimited offensive operations from Iraqi soil.
Syria was significantly easier than Iraq. Syria was cake in all scenarios where Israel maintained a viable threat axis via the Golan.
That's the data, make of it what you will.
Personally, at this stage of the game, since Iran is several years shy of a operational nuclear capability, I would prefer a limited political and military response to incidents where they are caught supplying Iraqi insurgents, to include UN sanctions, airstrikes against C4I, NBC, and AD targets (sends the message and preps the field for later on), and/or additional special operations.
Nobody here really thinks that 13 Iranian buses filled with "tourists" all ran into fuel tanker trucks at the exact same time in SE Iran a year or so back, do they?
And what they are doing (in Iran and else where...CURRENTLY) you will 95% never hear about -
So, stop thinking we "aren't" doing anything -
" The price of crude will never recede. At least, not in the way that you mean. We are on the back-curve of refinery capability and China & India will continue to grow, albeit more slowly."
Exactly. Yet another very good but troublesome example on how our country has decided to got for short term gains verse long therm stablity, job assurances, staying on the top in all fields of endeavore, etc.. Your probably right. The gig is up. The costs to extract shell oil and off shore deep drilling is prohibitive in the America of today. No one will want to invest. Hey it is easier to let the Saudi's sell us crude, lubricants, all varities of cracked fractions, ethenal from oil refinery processes, and a slew of end products that are used by all to manufacture thousands of end products. Now what we got to do is move all current specialty chemical companies off shore, hey it is cheaper to make nylon on shore then here. Close all the refineries down. Hey their old. We can't afford to upgrade them. Let other countries take care of of refinery services. Hey we got WalMarts, they sell cheap Chicom junk. Surely WalMarts will get us through this all. Sad day in black rock. Used to be white rock. heh heh. Thanks for feedback.
What I should do is offer an apology to the poster for taking us off original topic. I am sorry.
Did you figure in the rise in the cost of oil and dislocation to the worlds capital markets in your
scenario?
Mind you I agree that it is necessary and desirable
to achieve regime change, but we need to accurately
assess what the collateral effects could be..
Sir, I really appreciate the feedback you provided. I will allow what you shared to sink in to those still active on these threads. I shall download your analysis and print it out so that I can carefully using Times Atlas maps and other map sources of Iran follow what you share.
Perhaps a personal email or two with some further questions will not try your patience. Your analysis sort of vindicates what I have been harping on in this post as well as similiar ones. Thank you.
Semper Fi
Wed Aug 10, 2:53 PM ET
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq's interior minister said Wednesday that reports of deadly roadside bombs being smuggled into this country from Iran are exaggerated.
| ADVERTISEMENT |
On Tuesday, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said some insurgent weapons are entering Iraq from Iran although it's unclear whether they were coming from elements of the Iranian government or from other parties.
< snip >
Well this isn't surprising, but it's good that these weapons were found!
Step One: Find their address.
Step Two: Return to sender via express same day delivery.
"Two Mechanized divisions can make short work of Iran. A modern US division has nearly three times the firepower of Patton's WWII Third Army. They are smaller and the government has a population that hates them. They are ripe for overthrow."
HA!!! I heard the same thing before the Iraq War. And here we are...
That being said. We should support an internal revolution, nothing else.
Iran invasion imminent. Crude to $100. Interest rates rising. Financial terrorist Alan Greenspan trying to destroy the value of your home. Looks like grim days ahead.
The guys we are fighting in Iraq now are those who I say we should attack. Whats the difference? Internal revolution as you say is a real good thing we would all like to see. You know we can get people in Iran to do just as the insurgents (Iranian, Syrian and others) do to us. Give them a taste of their own medicine.
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